The Care and Feeding of Newbies

I write web applications in PHP for a living, so in addition to a ton of ham radio mailing lists, I also subscribe to PHP mailing lists and RSS feeds. While reading a blog post on PHP user groups, I found a link to an article on Linux.Com called, “The care and feeding of newbies at LUG meetings.”

Much of this article applies to how we should treat newcomers to ham radio meetings. I especially like the suggestion to recognize visitors. This is something that’s very simple to do and could pay big dividends.

I also like the idea of planning activities for newcomers. In our club, we are going to be starting a series of short talks on really basic topics for beginners. We’re going to do these before the regular meeting.